Authors: Jason Heller
Tags: #Fiction, #Satire, #Alternative History, #Political
Taft 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Jason Heller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2011933458
eISBN: 978-1-59474-556-0
Cover design and illustration by Doogie Horner
Cover photo by Sherwood Forlee
Interior design by Katie Hatz
Production management by John J. McGurk
Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
quirkbooks.com
v3.1
To the real Irene: Margaret Smith, my grandmother, who came into this world the same week Taft was voted out of office. I hope you’re somewhere fixing a nice plate of chicken-and-dumplings for Big Bill right now
.
“T
he Bigness of the job demands a man of Taft’s type. He is thoroughly prepared for the task.… Never has there been a candidate for the Presidency so admirably trained in varied administrative service. Creed and color make no difference to him; he seeks to do substantial justice to all. There isn’t a mean streak in the man’s make-up. No man, too, fights harder when he thinks it necessary—but he hates to fight unless it
is
necessary.”
—
President Theodore Roosevelt, explaining why he endorsed William Howard Taft to follow him in office, 1908
“To be a successful latter-day politician, it seems one must be a hypocrite.… That sort of thing is not for me. I detest hypocrisy, cant, and subterfuge. If I have got to think every time I say a thing, what effect it is going to have on the public mind—if I have got to refrain from doing justice to a fair and honest man because what I may say may have an injurious effect upon my own fortune—I had rather not be president.”
—
President William Howard Taft, two years into his term, 1910
December 6, 1912
Dear President Taft.
I am sorry you lost your election. My daddy says Wilson is a lousy so & so. When you are not busy being President any more you can come visit me at my house because I am from Cincinnati too. I would like a Teddy Roosevelt bear for Christmas. Thank you for reading my letter. Liberty & justice for all.
Signed, Irene O’Malley, age 6
The Washington Herald
Editorial column
March 5, 1913
The
Herald
editorial board would like to add a final note to our exclusive reportage of President Wilson’s inauguration.
This newspaper has certainly had its disagreements with William Howard Taft during the four years he resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and we have not hesitated to point out the many occasions upon which “Big Bill” failed to live up to his predecessor Mr. Roosevelt’s fine example: for instance, his shameful treatment of that American institution, U.S. Steel. His refusal to sign legislation that would have sensibly restricted immigration to the literate. His un-American love for taxing businesses at the exorbitant rate of
an entire percent
of their annual income. This editorial board could go on at length!
But, for all these faults, we must acknowledge that Mr. Taft usually
managed to approximate the personal behavior of a civil gentleman while president, a fact that leaves us all the more scandalized by his behavior yesterday. After saying his good-byes at the White House door in the morning, Big Bill subsequently did not bother to
show up at all
for resident Wilson’s swearing-in. A more egregious snub, a more unpresidential breach of propriety, can hardly be imagined!
Thus, having been granted no opportunity for a final interview with the twenty-seventh president of the United States—and, we might point out, the tenth president to be denied a second term by an unhappy American people—the
Herald
editorial board must deliver our parting words here upon this page: Shame on you, Mr. Taft. We surely don’t know what errand you could possibly have found so much more important than handing the reins of American democracy to your successor. Did you imagine Ohio could not wait another twenty-four hours to have its “biggest success” back? Or could you simply not bear to face a crowd of 250,000 people most eager to cheer your victor?
In any case, we have no doubt that the American people will see Big Bill again soon. After all, how could we
fail
to see him? The man is so large, he had to be pried loose from the White House bathtub. A proud legacy indeed, sir.
D
ark.
It had been dark for so long. Dark and warm and wet and heavy. And silent.
So silent.
But not entirely so. He could hear things sometimes. A low hum of machines. A distant peal of laughter. A soft patter of either rain or tears.
He could feel things, too. The settling of the soil. The tickle of roots. The stately migration of the seasons.
And hunger. Good lord, the hunger.
He gnawed at the loam sometimes as he dreamed. He imagined he was buried under an avalanche of roasted chicken and brown gravy and custard. All he need do was eat his way out.
Instead, he slept.
That is, until the lights came.
It was a twinkling at first. They flashed intermittently, these lights, and then they quickly disappeared. He felt the dull thud of concussion, too, but knew not from where. But each flash and each
thud brought him, bit by bit, out of his slumber.
Damnation, was he hungry.
With the hunger came memories. They lasted only as long as the flashes of light. First was a vision of a woman. A thin, pale woman. She spoke with difficulty, but she was happy, and she was strong-willed and alive. Even from this distance of space and time and consciousness, he drew from that strength.
Then there were children. Small ones and grown ones. There was a house, white as though carved from ivory. There was a man: bespectacled face round and beaming, voice so much louder than his own.
Then there was a smell. O glorious smell! The memory of it alone was almost enough to quell his ravenous, belly-clawing hunger. It was cherry. Cherry blossoms. The specter of the cool, sweet scent crept across his soul like a song. It came and went, but each time it faded, he clutched at it as if it were his own life’s blood.
Then, one day or minute or millennium later, he didn’t simply dream of the cherry blossoms. He smelled them.
The scent washed over him as he bolted upright. Other smells filled his nostrils too: rain and smoke and the familiar tang of roses. The cherry was faint, but it was there.
He had to find it. He ignored his hunger, ignored his pain, and pulled himself out of the infernal pit in which he’d found himself. He knew he was slathered in mud. No matter; he’d had mud slung at him before.
Groaning, his voice horribly coarse, he staggered into the light rain, looking for his beloved cherry blossoms. But there were none. It was autumn. The blossoms were long gone.
So instead he ran toward the sanctuary. The place where his one true friend slept.
The fountain.
But before he could make it there, he heard screams. He answered them in kind. He kept running.
That’s when he heard a crack like thunder and felt a fire like lightning in his leg.
He fell. His waking dream had passed.
When he woke again, water was running down his face. He could feel it stripping the mud from his skin and dripping from his mustache. He looked up. Hovering over him were men and women with brightly lit machines perched on their shoulders.
In the distance, a man ran toward them. He held what looked like a gun. He opened his mouth. Words came out.